I am a former EUROCONTROL software analyst-programmer in Flight Plan Processing at Karlsruhe UIR control center Karlsruhe with operational responsibility of maintenance and enhancement 1992 - 1997. My experience is in large systems also outside the ATC area. Systems psychology and human computer interaction areas are of special interest to me and I have taught in these areas at Istanbul Yeditepe University computer department.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Yoğun Dikkatten Sonra Rahatlamak - 1

RELAXING AFTER HIGH CONCENTRATION - 1

What can be done after a tiring day to relax? Even people working in normal jobs have to spend effort to relax after some heavy loaded days. This article is the first of a series that explains some of the techniques that can be used to relax... After the first article which is about ‘Focal’ and ‘ambient’ vision types and their relation to relaxing, I will write about getting rid of mental energy by using it for nothing and the function of imagination. As the last point of interest, I will propose a technique to get rid of the high concentration and relax by alluding to Sartre’s “Imagination and Consciousness”.Yoğun dikkat gerektiren yorucu bir günün sonunda rahatlamak için neler yapılabilir? Normal işlerde çalışan kişiler bile bazı yoğun günler işten sonra rahatlamak o günü unutmak için çaba harcamak zorunda kalırlar. Bu yazı rahatlamak için kullanılabilecek bazı teknikleri açıklayan bir dizi yazının ilki… Odaklı(focal) ve çevresel(ambient) görüş çeşitlerini ve bunların rahatlama ile ilgisini ele alacak 1. yazıdan sonra zihinsel enerjinin boşa harcanış şekilleri ve hayal edişin işlevini ele alacağım. Son olarak Sartre’ın ‘Hayal ve Bilinç’ (Imagination and consciousness) adlı makalesinden faydalanarak yoğun dikkatten kurtulmak ve rahatlamak için bir teknik önereceğim.

Every engineer, air traffic controller, large systems operator who work with computers have to focus their attention to a small area for long periods of time. These people have difficulty looking at large areas and at distant things when they get out of their working place.Bütün gün bilgisayar başında çalışan mühendisler, hava trafik kontrolörleri, büyük sistem operatörleri çoğunlukla uzun süre için dikkatlerini belirli bir noktaya ya da alana toplamak zorundalar. Uzun süre dar bir alana dikkat toplayan kişiler dışarı çıktıklarında geniş alanlara ve uzağa bakmakta zorlanırlar.

When you look at the carpet under the table, even though some of the patterns are behind the table’s legs you still percieve the situation as if you see the whole carpet. The mind deducts the continuation of patterns from the way day come and although they are not seen it is felt as if they are[2]. The deduction of patterns may be related with the ambient vision and more general automatic processing of the brain. Oturduğunuz yerden masanın altındaki halıya baktığınızda, desenlerin bir kısmı masanın ayaklarının arkasında kalsa da siz sanki tüm halıyı görüyormuş gibi algılarsınız durumu. Beyniniz desenlerin geliş şeklinden, devamlarını çıkartır ve siz onları görmeseniz de görüyormuş gibi hissedersiniz[2]. Desenlerin tamamlanması ambient görüş ve beynin daha genel otomatik işlem yapış süreçleri ile ilgili olabilir.

After high concentration jobs with focused vision one should give more chance to the automatic processes of the ambient vision. It would be usefull to stay 3-4 hours in an environment with a wide view and far distances. To view the depths not the surface, the view not the objects but the volume created between them would be useful. To view objects in their context and imagine the missing parts that can not be seen.Odaklanmış bakış esaslı yoğun dikkatli çalışmadan sonra çevresel görüşün otomatik meknizmalarına daha çok şans tanımak gerekir. Geniş manzaralı uzaklara bakılabilecek ufuk çizgili bir mekanda 3-4 saat geçirmek faydalı olabilir. Yüzeyi değil derinliği seyretmek, nesneleri değil onların birlikte oluşturdukları hacmi seyretmek iyi gelebilir. Nesneleri bağlamları içinde seyretmek, görünmeyen yerlerini hayal etmek…

In addition to the distinction between auditory and visual modalities of processing, there is good evidence that two aspects of visual processing, referred to as focal and ambient vision, appear to define separate resources in the sense of

(a) supporting efficient time-sharing,

(b) being characterized by qualitatively different brain structures, and

(c) being associated with qualitatively different types of information processing

(Leibowitz et al. 1982, Weinstein and Wickens 1992, Previc 1998).

Focal vision, which is nearly always foveal, is required for fine detail and pattern recognition (e.g. reading text, identifying small objects). In contrast, ambient vision heavily (but not exclusively) involves peripheral vision, and is used for sensing orientation and ego motion (the direction and speed with which one moves through the environment). When we successfully walk down a corridor while reading a book, we are exploiting the parallel processing or multiple resource capabilities of focal and ambient vision, just as we are when keeping the car moving forward in the centre of the lane (ambient vision) while reading a road sign, glancing at the rear view mirror or recognizing a hazardous object in the middle of the road (focal vision).

Aircraft designers have considered several ways of exploiting ambient vision to provide guidance and alerting information to pilots, while their focal vision is heavily loaded by 166 C. D. Wickens perceiving specific channels of displayed instrument information (Stokes et al. 1990, Liggett et al. 1999) It is appropriate to ask whether the successful time sharing of focal and ambient visual tasks results because ambient vision uses separate resources, or because it uses no resources at all; that is, processing from ambient vision may be said to be 'preattentive' or automated. At the present time, insufficient data exist to answer this question, as few researchers have attempted to examine dual task performance of two ambient tasks. One study (Weinstein and Wickens 1992), however, did suggest that the second (pre-attentive/automatic) explanation offered above may in fact be the more correct one.[2] Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings, Edited By Stephen Priest, Routledge, 2005

Imagination and Emotion, The Psychology of Imagination, Consciousness and Imagination

P 95

For an objects or any element of an object there is a great difference between being grasped as nothing and being-given-as-absent.

…

For instance, the arabesques of the rug I am viewing are both in part given to my intuition. The legs of the arm chair which stands before the window conceal certain curves, certain designs. But I nevertheless seize these hidden arabesques as existing now, as hidden but not at all as absent. … I grasp what has been given me of their continuation.

…

It is therefore in the way in which I grasp the data that I posit that which is not given as being real. Real by the same right as the data, as that which gives its meaning and its very nature. Likewise the successive tones of a melody are grasped by appropriate retentions as that which makes of the tone now heard exactly what it is. In this sense, to percieve this or that real datum is to percieve it on the foundation of total reality as a whole.”

P96

“If I want to imagine the hidden arabesques, I direct my attention upon them and isolate them, just as I isolate on the foundation of an undifferentiated universe the thing I actually percieve. I cease to grasp them as empty but constituting the sense of the percieved reality, instead I present them to myself, in themselves. But at the moment that I cease to concieve them as continuous present in order to grasp them in themselves, I grasp them as absent. Of course they really exist over there, under the chair , and it is over there that I think of them, but in thinking of them where they are not given to me, I grasp them as nothing for me. Thus the imaginative act is at once constitutive, isolating and annihilating.